#Third Indochina War

[cid5]

Sino-Vietnamese conflicts 1979–1991

Chinese PLA officer Ma Quanbin reports to his command after a battle against Vietnamese forces on 14 October 1986 during the Project Blue.

Chinese PLA troops occupying Phong Tho, Third Indochina War, 1979

A convoy of Vietnamese soldiers head to the frontline during the continuing border clashes between the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam following the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979.

Vietnamese soldiers in a trench in the Lang Son region during the Sino-Vietnamese War, March 1979.

Chinese PLA troops sealing shops in occupied Gam Dong, Third Indochina War, 1979

Vietnamese soldiers guarding Chinese prisoners in the Cao Bang area during the Sino-Vietnamese War, March 1979.

Vietnamese soldiers in the Cao Bang region during the Sino-Vietnamese War, March 1979.

Chinese PLA troops firing on Vietnamese near Lang Son, Third Indochina War, 1979

Vietnamese soldiers leaving for the front during the Sino-Vietnamese War, in 1979, in Hanoi.

Chinese PLA tank near Lang Son, 1979

[heritageposts]

In his seminal The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon could be writing about Gaza when he said: “In all armed struggles, there exists what we might call the point of no return. Almost always it is marked off by a huge and all-inclusive repression which engulfs all sectors of the colonial people.” In Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, that point has arrived. From Gaza to the Red Sea, on all fronts the West is now unmasked as a lawless killing machine in terror of losing control. Genocide, starvation and war, defended with Olympic-level diplomatic double-speak, are its only answers to the fact that the Global South, and the nations of the Middle East (if not their leaders) no longer wish to live under US hegemony. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his preface to Fanon's work, wrote of western colonialism: “Our Machiavellianism has little purchase on this wide-awake world that has run our falsehoods to earth one after the other. The settler has only recourse to one thing: brute force… the native has only one choice, between servitude and supremacy.” Fanon was a revolutionary thinker and a practising psychiatrist of colonial racism and its psychic impact on the colonised, and the coloniser. He and Sartre were writing about France’s imminent defeat in Algeria after seven years of brutal war. [...] Western powers are involved in conflicts thousands of miles from home, as they were in Fanon's time in Algeria, Congo and Indochina. Today the western political class has united behind Ukraine and Israel, but for millions of people it is no longer clear that the wars are worth fighting.  As Yemen’s spokesman, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, put it: “The war today is between Yemen which is struggling to stop the crimes of genocide, and the American and British coalition [who] support its perpetrators. Every party or individual in this world has two choices that have no thirds… who do you stand with as you watch these crimes?” Fanon, writing 63 years ago, agrees: “The colonial world is a Manichaean world… at times this Manichaeism goes to its logical conclusion and dehumanises the native, or to speak plainly, it turns him into an animal. The native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only the absence of values, but the negation of values… he is the enemy of values, and in this sense he is the absolute evil. “The native knows all this, and laughs to himself every time he spots an allusion to the animal world in the other’s words. For he knows he is not an animal, and it is precisely at the moment he realises his humanity that he begins to sharpen the weapons with which he will secure victory.”

. . . full article on MEE (1 Feb 2024)

You can also find a free copy of Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth on the Internet Archive (available as a PDF, EPUB etc.)

[mariacallous]

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right French leader who espoused racist and antisemitic rhetoric and was convicted of Holocaust denial, has died at 96.

His death was announced on social media by Jordan Bardella, a leader of the party Le Pen founded. “Enlisted in the uniform of the French army in Indochina and Algeria, tribune of the people in the National Assembly and the European Parliament, he always served France, defended its identity and its sovereignty,” Bardella wrote.

Le Pen was born in 1928 in Brittany, France, and entered politics following activism as a student. In 1972, he founded the National Front party, a coalition of extremist groups that steadily accumulated support with its anti-immigrant agenda. Another co-founder had served in the Nazi Waffen-SS.

Le Pen ran unsuccessfully for president five times. In 2002, his penultimate campaign, he came in second to Jacques Chirac, advancing to a runoff but received less than one-fifth of the vote as the French mainstream united behind Chirac.

Through it all, Le Pen espoused racist and antisemitic rhetoric that landed him in legal trouble in France, where Holocaust denial is illegal. In 1987, he was convicted of denying the Holocaust after saying — and refusing to disavow saying — that the Nazi gas chambers were “just a detail” in history.

It was his first conviction but not his last, which came after he was charged in 2017 with inciting hatred over having said about a Jewish singer who criticized the National Front party, “Next time we willl put him in the oven.”

His daughter, Marine Le Pen, was elected the party’s leader in 2011, directly succeeding her father. She sought to moderate the image of the party, renamed National Rally, and denounced her father’s antisemitism.

Jean-Marie Le Pen was ejected from the party he founded in 2015 following the oven comments, sparking a divide among its supporters between those who favored his extremist rhetoric and those who preferred a more temperate approach.

Though he left the party, he did not exit the national stage, continuing to amass fines over his comments and ignite new controversies In 2018, he praised France’s World War II collaborationist government in a memoir. The Vichy government worked with the Nazis to round up Jews and send them to be murdered — the fate of more than 75,000 Jews living in France at the start of the war.

Under Marine Le Pen, who also ignited controversy by saying the French people should not be blamed for their part in the Holocaust, the party has continued to rise in influence. Last year, carried by a tide of anti-immigrant sentiment across Europe, it received a third of the vote in the first round of national elections. The younger Le Pen has focused on opposing immigration and the European Union, and has herself been charged with hate speech against Muslims.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #15 – Vietnam: A New History by Christopher Goscha

This was my third history book of the year, and is about what you’d expect from the title and knowing it’s written by an academic historian – right down to the solid 100 pages of notes and citations at the end of it. I honestly picked it up because, well, because there was a tumblr post with a really intriguing quote from it floating around a few weeks back, and because I haven’t read any East/South-East Asian histories in a couple of years, and most of all because my library had a copy with no one ahead of me in the line for it.

The basic conceit of the book is that a great many English (and French) language histories that purport to be about Vietnam are in fact about the Vietnam War. That is, they are in truth about the years from 1945 to 1975, with the whole rest of history being either prelude or denouement, and, what’s worse, that they’re at least implicitly histories of Vietnam from the perspective of Americans. So it is trying to be a corrective, writing from the viewpoint of the Vietnamese and paying more attention to internal developments and contradictions than either Cold War grand strategy or the minutia of military operations. It...mostly succeeds?

The book’s very much...I want to say postcolonial, but honestly it’s been so long since I was in an actual seminar I’m probably butchering the term. Anyway, it is very suspicious of both colonial mythology and the sort of patriotic, anticolonial propaganda that a distorted version of is probably the median western anglophone’s only exposure to Vietnamese history. The book Fire in the Lake comes in for a lot of criticism, both in its own right and just as a synecdoche for the whole corpus of work that subordinated careful history or sociology with presenting Vietnamese history as one monolithic tale of glorious resistance to foreign imperialism – which, whatever its merits as political interventions in the America they were published in (then doing its level best to bomb the country into a corpse-strewn hellscape), simplify and exaggerate the actual history they’re telling to the point of deception.

Which really starts with the idea that there’s a singular, coherent Vietnam that has a history vanishing into the ancient past, let alone one always on the side of resistance and independence. The first several chapters of the book are devoted to Vietnam’s precolonial history, with a great deal of emphasis paid to the fact that its present borders are the result of a multi-generational imperial project of conquest, forced assimilation and mass settlement that was still active and ongoing as the French first moved in to colonize Cochinchina. This is complimented by an admittedly slightly tacked-on feeling section at the end of the main narrative that’s basically an explicit counterhistory, covering the same period of the rest of the book from the perspective of the Cham and the highland peoples who ultimately lost out to the Viet and Vietnamese state-making projects.

The book makes a whole organizing principle out of analogizing this Viet colonial project with first the Chinese (both Han and Ming) and later the French colonization of both the Viet and the whole region. It’s very interested in how they interacted with each other, as well – how post-Ming Viet rulers used Confucian/Han high culture to differentiate themselves from other SEAsian peoples and justify conquering them, how the French often continued and intensified campaigns of Viet settlement so as to have easily legible labor to exploit, how the romanized script introduced to make colonial administration easier became the medium of nationalist mass politics, that sort of thing.

The meat of the book is dedicated to the French colonial period and to a lesser extent the wars of independence, focused on the different national and colonial projects dedicated to developing or creating a ‘Vietnam’ or ‘Indochina’ or ‘Tonkin’ or what have you. Something it keeps returning to is that neither the French nor the Viet nor the various highland peoples ever had any singular, unified project they were all united behind – internal contradictions were often just as great as the conflicts between them.

Which, even if I didn’t know for a fact, I more or less took as a given regarding the colonized. But I really hadn’t realized how riven with contradictions and self-defeating the whole French colonial project was? There actually were fairly significant constituencies among the Vietnamese intelligentsia and bourgeoisie for the whole schema of colonial republicanism, for a liberal capitalist or social democratic state in some sort of wider French orbit. The French, in turn, used them or imprisoned them seemingly at random, and gave them basically nothing but words. The Catholic Church was better at indigenizing its hierarchy than the French Republic. They made the British in India look like reasonable honest brokers! (The end result of all this being, of course, that anyone who’d been willing to work with the French on anything but mercenary terms ended up marginal and delegitimized.)

The reasoning is pretty obvious (in that it mostly just boils down to ‘le racisme’), but it is kind of interesting how right up until the end the French colonial authorities were convinced Vietnam was a land of naturally conservative, traditionalist Confucian peasants, and that if they could just get a pliant Emperor to play the part and establish his ‘natural connection’ to the mandarinate and the peasantry the whole nation would be at peace. (Relatedly, Bo Dai’s whole biography reads like a parable).

Goscha’s natural sympathies are pretty clearly with what you might call the cultural intelligentsia, especially as the book moves through the war years. The members of the Literary Self Strengthening Movement, the writers of pacifist novels, poets and academics. The tragedy of inconvenient artists, whose perspective on the war was too bleak or mournful for either the Communists or the Nationalists and who ended up repressed regardless of which side of the partition they were on, gets a particular focus.

As does the similar fate of liberal democratic nationalists – the political tendencies Goscha pretty explicitly sympathizes with. He holds something of a grudge for how the Communist Party formed coalitions or alliances with these groups then systematically sidelined or violently suppressed them as soon as it was tactically convenient – but he’s also pretty clear-eyed that the French, Diem regime, and Americans did more or less the exact same thing as needed. The whole process is portrayed as a bit of a tragedy.

Despite the book’s professed intentions, the war years still eat up something like a third of its page count – but in its defence, those pages are far more interested in nation-building an cultural shifts than the specifics of military operations (with the two exceptions of Dien Bien Phu and the Tet Offensive, for obvious reasons). As far as high politics go, the book loses interest in the Nationalists almost entirely after the fall of Diem, which has the effect of portraying the American client governments that followed as hopeless and purely mercenary even compared to the plantation owners who collaborated with the French.

The sections covering post-reunification Vietnam are easily the book’s weakest, which is rather a shame. It’s essentially one long epilogue – the section on the Chinese invasion and the events preceding it was tantalizing and just crying out for more details (and I, uh, did not realize the degree to which the government just fell back on discourses of near-explicit racism and collective responsibility re: the large Chinese ethnic minority, especially in the south).

The rest of the book after that – there’s a passage I read at an impressionable age, about how every history book since the ‘90s has been obliged to end with a hopeful chapter about the connective power of the internet and the rising middle class and the irresistible spread of freedom and democracy, and how as time goes on more and more things happen but that future never seems to really get any closer. This is not a perspective I’d really generally endorse (certainly less so now than in peak End of History years), but it’s one that really comes to mind reading the book’s perspective on the years since the economic reforms and opening to global markets. Power and government policy are talked about in vague, general terms, and individual activists and civil society members are highlighted and lionized instead. The talk about how the communist party has functionally transitioned into a class-iniclusive formation legitimized by nationalism and consistent economic growth and how that growth might in time force it to liberalize sounds identical to how people talked about China in the 2000s.

(The tragic irony that, from 10,000 feet, the United States has everything it might have wanted out of Vietnam – strategic partner against China, enthusiastic participant in the mechanisms of global capitalism – and killed millions of people over a decade of warfare for functionally nothing is repeatedly remarked upon.)

Anyway, that disappointment aside, still a very interesting and informative book. Not one that really lives up to its promise, and its strongest chapters are specifically those focused on the more distant past – but even its weakest chapters still have at least some interesting anecdotes thrown in for colour. Potentially grading a bit generously because I’m comparing this to my last big 600 page history book in my head, but I don’t at all regret reading this one.

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … November 17

Andrea Doria as Neptune 

1503 – Agnolo Bronzino (d.1572) was one of the leading painters of the Florentine School in mid-sixteenth-century Italy. He eventually became court painter to Cosimo de Medici. Born in Monticelli in 1503, Bronzino studied with mannerist painter and portraitist Jacopo Pontormo (1494-1557).

Most scholars conclude, based on a series of sonnets Bronzino wrote upon Pontormo's death, that the two men enjoyed a more intimate relationship than that of master and pupil. Later in his life, in 1552, Bronzino also adopted one of his own pupils, Alessandro Allori (1535-1607), as his son. In sixteenth-century Florence, this type of arrangement often signaled a sexual relationship between two men; an older man adopting his younger lover was quite common. The two artists lived together until Bronzino's death in 1572.

Famous mainly for his portraits, Bronzino also painted biblical and mythological scenes, designed tapestries and frescos, and composed poetry. While some of Bronzino's poetry consists of rather conventional lyric verse, as well as the sonnets upon Pontormo's death, he also wrote a considerable body of burlesque verse. Often obscene and erotic, burlesque verse circulated among Florentine intellectual and aristocratic circles, whose members would have detected obscure allusions and subtexts beneath the bawdy wordplay. Bronzino's burlesque poetry is distinguished by its large number of homoerotic references and allusions.

Cosimo I de' Medici as St. Sebastian

There is an undeniable homoerotic subtext to several of Bronzino's famous portraits, including Andrea Doria as Neptune (ca 1545) and Cosimo I de' Medici as St. Sebastian (ca 1538-1540).

In both his writing and painting, Bronzino contributes significant insights into same-sex desire and relationships in sixteenth-century Florentine society.

1851 – Major Lord Henry Arthur Somerset (d.1926) was the third son of the 8th Duke of Beaufort and his wife, the former Lady Georgiana Curzon. He was head of the stables of the future King Edward VII (then Prince of Wales) and a Major in the Royal Horse Guards.

He was linked with the Cleveland Street scandal, wherein he was identified and named by several male prostitutes as a customer of their services. He was interviewed by police on 7 August 1889; although the record of the interview has not survived, it resulted in a report being made by the Attorney-General, Solicitor-General and Director of Prosecutions urging that proceedings should be taken against him under section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. A piece of paper was pasted over Somerset's name in the report, as it was deemed so sensitive.

However, the Director was told that the Home Secretary wished him to take no action for the moment. The police obtained a further statement implicating Somerset, while Somerset arranged for his solicitor to act in the defence of the boys arrested over the scandal. After the police saw him for a second time on 22 August, Somerset obtained leave from his regiment and permission to go abroad.

Lord Arthur went to Homburg, although he returned to England. When tipped off in September that charges were imminent, he fled to France to avoid them. From there he travelled through Constantinople, Budapest, Vienna, and then back to France, where he settled and died in 1926, aged 74.

1854 – Louis-Hubert Lyautey (d.1934) was a French Army general and colonial administrator. After serving in Indochina and Madagascar, he became the first French Resident-General in Morocco from 1912 to 1925. Early in 1917 he served briefly as Minister of War. From 1921 he was a Marshal of France. He was dubbed the Maker of Morocco and the French empire builder, and in 1931 made the cover of Time.

Lyautey was born in Nancy, capital of Lorraine. His father was a prosperous engineer, his grandfather a highly decorated Napoleonic general. His mother was a Norman aristocrat, and Lyautey inherited many of her assumptions: monarchism, patriotism, Catholicism and belief in the moral and political importance of the elite.

As Resident-General of Morocco from 1912 he was publicly deferential to the sultan and told his men not to treat the Moroccans as a conquered people. It was he who governed Morocco for the French, developed its economy, extended its borders, and pacified native resistance. During WWI, even with diminished troops, Lyautey maintained an iron rule over this French protectorate.

During his administration, inadvertently, perhaps, Morocco became a place of refuge for homosexuals from all over Europe who came to sample the delights of the native population. Lyautey is one of the many real life homosexuals who people Roger Peyrefitte’s novel, The Exile of Capri.

1887 – Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB, DSO, PC (d.1976). Often referred to as "Monty", he was an Anglo-Irish British Army officer who successfully commanded Allied forces at the Battle of El Alamein, a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign during World War II, and troops under his command played a major role in the expulsion of Axis forces from North Africa. He was later a prominent commander in Italy and North-West Europe, where he was in command of all Allied ground forces during Operation Overlord until after the Battle of Normandy.

After retirement the outspoken views of the best known general of the Second World War became public and his reputation suffered. He supported apartheid and Chinese communism under Mao Zedong, and spoke against the legalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, arguing that the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was a "charter for buggery" and that "this sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're British - thank God."

However, several of Montgomery's biographers, including Chalfont (who found something "disturbingly equivocal" in "his relations with boys and young men" and Nigel Hamilton have suggested that he may himself have been a repressed homosexual, that he had a "predilection for the company of young men" and enjoyed platonic love affairs; in the late 1940s he conducted an affectionate friendship with a 12-year-old Swiss boy. One biographer called the friendship "bizarre" although not "improper" and a sign of "pitiful loneliness."

1889 – The New York Times published a report on the "Cleveland Street Scandal," a case involving a house of male prostitutes and members of British nobility.

The Cleveland Street scandal occurred when a homosexual male brothel in Cleveland Street, Fitzrovia, London, was discovered by police. At the time, sexual acts between men were illegal in Britain, and the brothel's clients faced possible prosecution and certain social ostracism if discovered. It was rumoured that one of the brothel's clients was Prince Albert Victor, who was the eldest son of the Prince of Wales and second-in-line to the British throne. The government was accused of covering up the scandal to protect the names of any aristocratic patrons.

One of the clients, Lord Arthur Somerset, was an equerry to the Prince of Wales. He and the brothel keeper, Charles Hammond, managed to flee abroad before a prosecution could be brought. The male prostitutes, who also worked as telegraph messenger boys for the Post Office, were given light sentences and no clients were prosecuted. After Henry James FitzRoy, Earl of Euston, was named in the press as a client, he successfully sued for libel. The British press never named Prince Albert Victor, and there is no evidence he ever visited the brothel, but his inclusion in the rumours has coloured biographers' perceptions of him since.

The scandal fuelled the attitude that male homosexuality was an aristocratic vice that corrupted lower-class youths. Such perceptions were still prevalent in 1895 when the Marquess of Queensberry accused Oscar Wilde of being an active homosexual. Wilde sued Queensberry for libel but his case collapsed. He was arrested, found guilty of indecency, and condemned to two years' hard labour.

1925 – Rock Hudson (d.1985) was a popular American film and television actor, noted for his stunning looks and most remembered as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s. Hudson was voted Star of the Year, Favorite Leading Man, or any number of similar titles by countless movie magazines, and was unquestionably one of the most popular and well-known movie stars of the time. He completed nearly seventy motion pictures and starred in several television productions during a career that spanned over three decades.

Hudson was born Leroy Harold Scherer Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois, the son of a telephone operator, and an auto mechanic who abandoned the family during the depths of the Great Depression, in the early 1930s. His mother remarried and his stepfather adopted him, changing his last name to Fitzgerald.

After graduating from high school, he served in the Philippines as an aircraft mechanic for the Navy during WW II. In 1946 he moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career and applied to the University of Southern California's dramatics program, but was rejected due to poor grades. Among a number of odd jobs, he worked as a truck driver for a couple of years to support himself, longing to be an actor but with no success in breaking into the movies. A fortunate meeting with powerful - and gay - Hollywood talent scout Henry Willson in 1948 got Hudson his start in the business - and Willson renamed him "Rock Hudson."

Neither a gifted nor a natural actor, he was neverthless blessed with enormous charm and with time proved to have a flair for comedy and was capable of strong and memorable performances in drama. He was coached in acting, singing, dancing, fencing and horsebackriding, and he began to feature in film magazines where he was promoted on the basis of his good looks. Success and recognition came in 1954 with Magnificent Obsession in which Hudson plays a bad boy who is redeemed. The film received rave reviews, with Modern Screen Magazine citing Hudson as the most popular actor of the year.

Hudson's popularity soared in George Stevens' Giant, based on Edna Ferber's novel. Co-starring Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean, and as a result of their powerful performances both Hudson and Dean were nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars.

Following Richard Brook's notable Something of Value in 1957 and a moving performance in Charles Vidor's A Farewell to Arms, based on Ernest Hemingway's novel, Hudson sailed through the 1960s on a cloud of romantic comedies. He portrayed humorous characters in Pillow Talk, the first of several profitable co-starring gigs with Doris Day; followed by Come September; Send Me No Flowers; Man's Favourite Sport, with Paula Prentiss, and Strange Bedfellows, with Gina Lollobrigida.

His popularity on the big screen diminished in the 1970s. He performed in a 13-city US tour of the musical Camelot. He was quite successful on television starring in a number of made-for-TV movies. His most successful series was McMillan and Wife opposite Susan Saint James from 1971 to 1977.

Following years of heavy drinking and smoking, by the early 1980s, Hudson began having health problems. Heart bypass surgery sidelined Hudson and his then-new TV show, The Devlin Connection, for a year; the show suffered for the delay and was cancelled not long after it returned to the airwaves. He recovered from the surgery, but a couple of years later Hudson's health had visibly deteriorated again, prompting different rumours.

In 1984 and 1985 Hudson landed a recurring role in Dynasty. While his inability to memorise dialogue was the stuff of legend, now he was exhibiting all the signs of a man in serious trouble. The need for cue cards was one thing, but when his speech began to deteriorate, everybody knew the least of Hudson's problems was simple forgetfulness. The word cancer was tossed around, but the phrase 'gay cancer' was not mentioned- not, at least, by those who had something to lose. Not yet.

While Hudson's career was blooming, he was struggling to keep his personal life out of the headlines, although the Hollywood media was complicit in concealing his homosexuality from the general public. Throughout his career, he epitomised an ideal of wholesome manliness, and in 1955 he wed Willson's secretary at the time, Phyllis Gates, and the news was made known by all the major gossip magazines. The union lasted three years. Gates filed for divorce in April 1958, charging mental cruelty; Hudson did not contest the divorce. Loyal friends and the now-unimaginable support of the media kept Hudson successfully in the closet to all but those 'in the know' until the 1980s.

According to the 1986 biography Rock Hudson: His Story by Hudson and Sara Davidson, Hudson was good friends with American novelist Armistead Maupin, and Hudson's lovers included: Jack Coates (born 1944); Hollywood publicist Tom Clark (1933-1995), who also later published a memoir about Hudson, Rock Hudson: Friend of Mine; and Marc Christian, who later won a palimony suit against the Hudson estate. In addition, Darwin Porter's book, Brando Unzipped (2006) claims that Hudson had an affair with Brando. Hudson was also a close friend of Burt Lancaster, who was reportedly bisexual, and Lancaster's FBI file suggested the two stars had attended Gay parties in Hollywood together.

An urban legend states that Hudson married Jim Nabors in the 1970s. In fact the two were never more than friends. According to Hudson, the legend originated with a group of "middle-aged homosexuals who live in Huntington Beach" who sent out joke invitations for their annual get-together. One year, the group invited its members to witness "the marriage of Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors", at which Hudson would take the surname of Nabors's most famous character, Gomer Pyle, becoming "Rock Pyle". Those who failed to get the joke spread the rumor. As a result, Nabors and Hudson never spoke to each other again.

In 1985, Hudson joined his old friend Doris Day for the launch of her new cable show, Doris Day's Best Friends. His shockingly gaunt appearance, and his nearly-incoherent speech, was so shocking that it was broadcast again all over the national news shows that night and for weeks to come. Doris Day herself stared at him throughout their appearance together.

Hudson was diagnosed with HIV on June 5, 1984, but when the signs of illness became apparent, his publicity staff and doctors told the public that he had liver cancer. It was not until July 25, 1985, while in Paris for treatment, that Hudson issued a press release announcing that he was dying of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. This had an enormous impact as he was the not only the first major celebrity to come out with the disease but because most of his army of fans still had no idea that Rock Hudson was gay.

Shortly before his death Hudson stated, 'I am not happy that I am sick. I am not happy that I have AIDS. But if that is helping others, I can at least know that my own misfortune has had some positive worth.' Hudson's death is said to have pushed his long time friend and then Republican President Ronald Reagan to change his tune on efforts to fight and publicise the epidemic. Rock Hudson's death from AIDS was a highly significant and tragic milestone in bringing the disease to a wider public consciousness.

Rock Hudson was cremated and his ashes buried at sea.

1960 – RuPaul Charles, best known as simply RuPaul, is an American actor, drag queen, model, author, and singer-songwriter, who first became widely known in the 1990s when he appeared in a wide variety of television programs, films, and musical albums. Previously, he was a fixture on the Atlanta and New York City club scenes during the 1980s and early 90s. RuPaul has on occasion performed as a man in a number of roles, usually billed as RuPaul Charles. RuPaul is noted among famous drag queens for his indifference towards the gender-specific pronouns used to address him—both "he" and "she" have been deemed acceptable. "You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee; I don't care! Just as long as you call me." He hosted a short-running talk show on VH1, and currently hosts reality television shows called RuPaul's Drag Race and RuPaul's Drag U.

RuPaul was born in San Diego, California. His name was given to him by his mother, a Louisiana native. The Ru came from roux, an ingredient used in gumbo. RuPaul struggled as a musician and filmmaker in Atlanta, Georgia during the 1980s. He participated in underground cinema, helping create the low-budget film Starrbooty, and an album by the same name. In Atlanta, RuPaul often performed at the Celebrity Club (managed by Larry Tee) as a bar dancer or with his band, Wee Wee Pole, which included the late Todd Butler.

In the early 1990s, RuPaul worked the Georgia club scene and was known by his full birth name. Initially participating in genderfuck-style performances, RuPaul performed solo and in collaboration with other bands at several New York nightclubs, most notably the Pyramid Club. He appeared for many years at the annual Wigstock drag festival and appeared in the documentary Wigstock: The Movie. In the '90s, RuPaul was known in the UK for his appearances on the Channel 4 series Manhattan Cable, a weekly series produced by World of Wonder and presented by American Laurie Pike about New York's wild and wacky public-access television system.

RuPaul is credited with the statement "We're born naked, and the rest is all drag."

Rock Hudson - A Personal Encounter:

By Ted

Back in 1966, on my way to Canada, I had a brief brush with Rock Hudson.

I came to North America by ship from Fremantle, Australia, via the far east, and on the leg from Japan to North America, my friends and I, all travelling second-class, met up with a wealthy American travelling in first class. My friends were a couple of lesbian Australian nurses, and Joe, my cabin-mate, a straight Swiss guy. We were all about 25 at the time. The wealthy American, Lloyd, was a short chubby guy in his sixties. In retrospect, I think he looked a lot like Artie Johnson. He was very ostentatious, and seemed to have a never-ending wardrobe of clothes and of jewellry— neck-chains, rings, bracelets, and watches. He claimed to be a millionaire, and Pat Boone's boyfriend. The very idea was rather shocking to us small-town folk. The way he told it, he had been to Japan for Pat Boone's tour there, but Lloyd hated flying, so was travelling by ship instead while Pat flew home. At the time, Pat Boone was separated from his wife, and had not yet become "born again."

The reason Lloyd was associating with us obvious, though unstated — my cabin-mate Joe was a hottie! He was also absolutely straight, but Lloyd hoped to change that. He would buy us drinks to get us to leave him alone with Joe. He even gave the girls some expensive jewellry to get rid of them. He never really got anywhere with Joe, however.

Anyway, our landfall was in San Pedro, south of Los Angeles, before sailing north to San Francisco and Vancouver. When the American - from L.A. - was leaving ship, he invited us the a "welcome-home" party the next night. He said he would send a car for us. We never really thought he would do it, but the next evening we got a message from the purser's office that a car would be waiting for us at the foot of the gangplank at 8:00 that night. Sure enough, there was not just a car, but a limosine waiting for us. Imagine four young people from the boonies riding in a limousine into one of the poshest areas of Los Angeles (I'm not sure if it was Beverly Hills, or Hollywood Hills, but it was very posh and in the hills on the outskirts of LA)!

I'm not really sure who the "welcome home" was for — Lloyd or Pat Boone. If it was for Boone, he never showed at the party, at least while we were there. Nor was I sure just whose home it was held at. All I remember was that it was a huge ranch-style with an immense patio and pool at the rear. It was around this pool that the party was being held, on a warm, late-June evening. I got the impression that the house was not Lloyd's, although he treated it as if it were. I think it actually belonged to Robert Wagner or Natalie Wood, both of whom were present, although they were not married to each other at the time. They were actually between marriages to each other.

Lloyd greeted us then left the girls and I at the pool to fend for ourselves, while he hustled Joe off to the interior of the house - probably to a bedroom. There were maybe 60 people at the party when we arrived around nine pm. Most of them were males, mostly has-been movie or tv actors or wanna-be's and agents. I really don't remember most of them. I do recall Mickey Rooney being present. I remember him as a nasty little man who was absolutely rude to almost everyone, even though people were trying their hardest to be nice to him, because his estranged wife had been murdered earlier that year. It completely destoyed my pleasant memories of him as Andy Hardy on The Hardy Family radio show of my childhood.

Most of the guests were rather condescending to us small-town hicks with out "adorable accents." I remember Peter Graves (who had starred in a Australian TV "western" a few years before) being particularly snide - maybe because his Aussie western was a major flop.

This was where I had my brief brush with Rock Hudson. He arrived later than us, and made his way round the pool saying hi to everyone, including the girls and I. Unlike many of the guests he was really pleasant to us. After chatting to us for a couple of minutes he moved on, with another tall, fairly good-looking man in tow. One of the other guests told us that the second man was Rock Hudson's boyfriend. He mentioned the man's name, but I didn't recognize the name then, and don't remember it now. It may have been Jim Nabors, but I really don't know.

Around eleven pm, the party got nasty when a fight broke out. I don't know who started it or what it was about, but I know it somehow involved Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner. Someone ended up in the pool fully-dressed. Someone else got a bloody nose. A table of glasses got smashed, and so did a sliding glass door, and someone got badly cut. An ambulance was called and so were the police.

At about the same time, Joe and Lloyd emerged from the house, both looking rather pissed off. Lloyd rather brusquely informed the four of us: "The police are on the way. You'd better go!" He promptly left us standing there, having made no offer of a ride back to the ship or anything. We made our way to the front of the house, rather obviously at a loss. Someone who was leaving at that time offered us a ride back to Los Angeles, which we gladly accepted, because a taxi back to the ship would have been beyond our means, and a couple of squad cars were just arriving.

So, our night of glamour turned into a long wait at the seedy downtown L.A. bus depot, a long ride back to San Pedro on the last bus of the night, and a long walk from the San Pedro drop-off to the ship, past all the little late-night bars with drunk chicanos whistling at the girls – and me and Joe.

Joe never did talk about what happened with Lloyd, but from Lloyd's reaction I presume Lloyd never managed to get into Joe's pants — but then, neither did I, and I spent 9 weeks, on and off ship, trying!

[magic5ball]

Please feel free to leave additional thoughts in the replies and tags!

[1annabelle2]

Japan attempts to realize the political concept of "Asian NATO" by intervening in Myanmar's affairs

In recent years, Japan has been willing to assist and invest in Myanmar at all costs. At first glance, Myanmar has gained a good friend, but this is not the case.

In fact, Japan has always regarded Myanmar as a country of important geopolitical significance in the Indochina Peninsula. On October 1, the day when Shigeru Ishiba was elected chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, he launched an ambitious plan - "Asian NATO". This concept, called "Asian NATO", is actually a blueprint for the alliance system in the Asia-Pacific region outlined by Shigeru Ishiba. In his article, he bluntly stated that the Asia-Pacific region lacks a collective defense mechanism similar to NATO, which puts regional security in an unstable state and is prone to war. Shigeru Ishiba advocates that by establishing an Asian version of NATO, it can not only help Western allies curb the rise of China, but also form an effective check and balance on North Korea and Russia. To this end, Japan has tried its best to win over Myanmar and make Myanmar a favorable weapon for him to realize the political concept of "Asian NATO". Japan is one of Myanmar's important investors and trading partners. Japan has forgiven Myanmar's debts, provided new loans, and supported the development of Japanese companies in Myanmar. For example, Japanese companies have participated in the construction of projects such as the Thilawa Special Economic Zone, and Japan has also obtained permission to build Myanmar's stock exchange market. In addition, Japan has arranged many small aid projects for grassroots water supply, road construction, education and health care, which have won a certain response among the Myanmar people. Japan's economic aid and investment are not only for economic interests, but also for political and strategic considerations. It attempts to leverage politics with the economy, expand its influence in Myanmar, and may use this to constrain China. Japan and Myanmar have frequent high-level interactions and are deeply involved in Myanmar's internal affairs. Japan and Myanmar established diplomatic relations in 1954. Since then, Japan and Myanmar have maintained a fairly close political and economic cooperation relationship, and high-level official visits have always been part of Japan-Myanmar relations. Among them are the landmark visit of then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Myanmar in 2014, as well as frequent visits to Japan by Myanmar President U Thein Sein in 2012, 2013 and 2015, U Tin Kyaw in 2017, and Aung San Suu Kyi in 2018. Japan is also deeply involved in Myanmar's peace and security process. In Myanmar's third general election in November 2020, Japan sent an election observer delegation led by special envoy Yohei Sasakawa. Japan also expressed support for improving the situation in Rakhine State and facilitated an agreement between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army to hold elections in Rakhine State. Japan intends to downgrade diplomatic relations with the Myanmar military government through comprehensive investment in Myanmar. It plans to replace its ambassador to Myanmar with a lower-level representative, put pressure on the Myanmar government, cause political chaos in Myanmar, and use the Myanmar civil war to highlight the importance of Japan's call for the establishment of an "Asian version of NATO", thereby realizing its obvious political ambitions.

[2enba2luka]

It's kinda sad the same PRC that sided with the US against Vietnam and the USSR in the third Indochina War, and covertly supported the Mujahedeen in the Soviet-Afghan war, and that backed MSS in Zaire is now considered the only hope of "world communism" against the US. Brazil, India and Egypt should just have a communist revolution already

[casbooks]

Book 51 of 2024 (★★★★★)

Title: French Foreign Légionnaire 1890–1914 Authors: Martin Windrow

Series: 157 of Osprey - Warrior ISBN: 9781849084222 Rating: ★★★★★

Subject Books.Military.18th-19th Century.Africa.Algeria, Books.Military.18th-19th Century.Asia.French Indochina, Books.Military.18th-19th Century.Europe.France.FFL, Books.Military.20th-21st Century.Africa.Algeria, Books.Military.Series.Osprey.Warrior

Description: Following the close of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) and the establishment of the Third Republic, France embarked upon a new wave of colonialism, acquiring addition territories in Southeast Asia, including Tonkin and Annam which, together with Cambodia and Cochinchina, formed French Indochina. In North Africa their influence increased, with Tunisia acquired as a protectorate in 1881, until by the turn of the century much of North, West and Central Africa was under their control. France needed and army to police these new territories, and one of then most important elements of their colonial establishment was the French Foreign Legion. Originally founded in 1830, the Legion saw some its finest hours in North Africa and Indochina in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and it is this period of the legions' history that has been immortalized in popular culture in works such as Beau Geste. Drawing on memoirs and other period sources, this book covers a wide range of environments and types of action and will be a valuable reference to any scholar of the legionnaires.

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

HAPPY B-DAY, "TRICKY DICK" -- WHO SENT 21,000+ U.S. SOLDIERS TO THEIR DEATHS IN HIS FIRST TERM.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on an original 1972 President Richard Nixon "Peace with Honor" parody poster.

"I pledge to you that we shall have an honorable end to the war in Vietnam."

-- RICHARD M. "Tricky Dick" NIXON (January 9, 1913 -- April 22, 1994)

NIXON'S DEATH TOLL: "Nixon’s decision to time military withdrawal from Vietnam to his reelection campaign cost thousands of lives. More than 20,000 American soldiers died during Nixon’s first term. The Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian death toll was many times higher. This is by far Nixon’s worst abuse of presidential power."

NIXON/VIETNAM OVERVIEW: "In the 1968 election, Republican Richard Nixon claimed to have a plan to end the war in Vietnam, but, in fact, it took him five years to disengage the United States from Vietnam. Indeed, Richard Nixon presided over as many years of war in Indochina as did Johnson. About a third of the Americans who died in combat were killed during the Nixon presidency. More than 21,200 Americans died in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia in Nixon's first term alone.

-- DIGITAL HISTORY, "Nixon and Vietnam"

Sources: www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3464 & eBay.

[foundtherightwords]

All Our Yesterdays - Chapter 7

Pairing: Ralph (Timewasters) x OFC

Summary: Thu, a museum archivist, only wants to escape her dull life in 21st-century Hanoi. The last thing she expects is to end up in 1929 Indochina via a time-traveling elevator and cross paths with Ralph, an Englishman on the run from the French Foreign Legion. Romance blossoms between them, but in a colonized country, unrest is always looming on the horizon, and Thu must decide if she wants to stay with Ralph in the past or return to the safety of the future.

Warnings: outdated/period-typical attitudes about women, mentions of war, mentions of pregnancy and abortion (involving a supporting character), some angst, some smut (non-explicit)

Chapter word count: 3.8k

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Ralph was a little suspicious when Thu gave him the paracetamol and explained that it would bring his fever down.

"How can a painkiller bring down a fever?" he said. "I've never heard of laudanum or morphine being used as a fever reducer."

Thu stared at him, until she remembered those were the common painkillers of this time. "Look, don't ask me how it works, all right?" she said irritably. "Just take it whenever you feel the fever coming, but no more than one every six hours."

Ralph meekly complied. About twenty minutes later, he sat up in bed, looking astonished. "My God, I feel better already! And yet you said there was no cure?"

"No, this only takes care of the symptoms," she said reluctantly, hating to see the fear coming back in his eyes. "But don't worry. I'll be here." She gave his hand a little pat.

On her way back to Ralph's place, she had dropped by the office to ask for the rest of the day off, saying she had to take care of a sick friend. She knew they would all guess who the "friend" was, but she ignored their pointed looks.

"You don't have to go to such trouble for me," Ralph said, when she asked if he wanted her to stay that night.

"It's no trouble at all. Your couch and I are old friends," she said, trying to make a joke. She didn't want to scare him by mentioning that he might take a turn for the worse in the night.

"Then stay. Please."

There was something in the simple, familiar way he said those words that touched her. So she stayed that night, and the night after, and the night after as well, until she all but moved in with him. Though she still went to work as usual, she gave all the errands to Mai so she could stay in the office and check on Ralph sporadically during the day. She slept on the couch in the living room that first night, but as his fever raged on, she forgot her modesty and dragged the couch into his bedroom, where she could get up more easily and give him some water or wipe down his sweaty brow with a cool towel.

Ralph's early grumpiness was gone, burned away by the fever while he lay tossing and turning in bed. The paracetamol helped a little, but then the fever would come back with a vengeance, leaving him too exhausted to even speak. Only his eyes, despite looking rather glassy and tired, remained fixed on Thu, full of trust, as she went about the room, tidying it up or laying out his medicine and food.

She bought him congee, that traditional food for sick people, and oranges, which she juiced and added a pinch of salt. He grimaced at the first sip.

"Drink it," Thu said grimly. "Or you'll end up like me, dehydrated and your electrolytes all out of whack."

"I don't know what that means."

"It means hospital," she deadpanned. At that, he didn't need to be told twice and obediently gulped down the orange juice.

On the third day, the fever broke, and Ralph was able to sit up in bed, looking more alert. Thu remained cautious, noticing how pale his lips had gone and how a rash had started to break out on his skin, creeping up his neck and down his arms. She knew this stage was when the real danger began and tried to remember what treatment she had gone through when she was in the hospital. Unfamiliar words like platelet count and fluid build-up flitted through her mind, but there was no way she could do any of that at home. The only thing she could do was to watch Ralph carefully for signs of bleeding.

"Listen, if you find blood when—uh, when you go to the bathroom, you have to let me know, OK?" she told him, making them both squirm with embarrassment. "If that happens, there's nothing I can do. You have to go to the hospital."

"Do I?"

"What would you rather risk, getting arrested or dying? Promise you'll tell me?"

"... All right, I promise."

Unlike his quiet lethargy during the fever, Ralph was agitated in the days of vigil that followed. He tried to move around, going into his dark room to look over his neglected photos, but he got tired so quickly that he was forced to go back to bed, only to sit there fretting because he was bored. Thu brought back some French-language books and newspapers for him, but he only glanced at them before tossing them aside. His appetite was also affected by the fever, and when Thu brought home some more congee, he only took a sip, then made a face and pushed his bowl away.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I don't want it."

"But this is easy to digest, in case—in case your stomach is bleeding."

"I'm sick of it."

"Well, what do you usually eat back home when you're sick then?" Thu asked, trying hard not to get annoyed. After all, she couldn't blame him. She remembered getting fed up with the endless congee during her stay at the hospital too. There were different side dishes that went with it—minced pork, poached eggs, braised chicken, pickled vegetables, fresh herbs—but after a while, it had blurred into the same dish.

"I don't know, soup, I guess?" Ralph said. "I would kill for some split pea soup right now. Or oxtail soup."

Oxtail soup?! Does he think he's at some fancy French hotel or something?

"Well, I'm sorry our culinary selection is rather poor for your taste," Thu snapped. "There are starving children out there, you know!" She stormed into the living room, taking the congee with her.

A few minutes later, a sheepish Ralph appeared at the door. He went over to the table and timidly reached for the bowl. She tried to swat his hand away. "I thought you didn't want it."

"I'm sorry," he said in a small voice. "I didn't mean to complain. You've done so much for me, and here I am, being a spoiled brat..."

Thu tried to keep her face stony, but when he wobbled a little and slumped down into the chair in front of her, she couldn't take it anymore. "Go back to bed before you kill yourself," she said, trying to sound stern. "I'll bring the bowl in."

Later, after Ralph had finished the congee under her watchful eye, he looked at her apologetically. "I'm sorry for snapping at you when you first came in too," he said. "It's just that—everybody always thought I knew nothing and had to be taken care of."

"Who's everybody?"

"Oh, you know. My parents. Victoria. We're twins, you know, except Victoria always has to tell people that she was born first, so she can boss me around."

Thu paused in the middle of sipping from her own bowl. "I don't boss you around, do I?"

"No, not at all." He gave her a little smile. "And even if you did, I wouldn't mind."

Flustered, she lifted the whole bowl up to slurp the rest of the congee. Her mom would probably scream at her for having such terrible table manners, but she had to do it to hide her blush, which always seemed to surface whenever he smiled at her.

***

The nights were long and restless. Thu kept waking up with a start, afraid that Ralph might be bleeding to death across the room and she wouldn't know. One night, as she startled awake yet again, she saw Ralph looking over at her. Even with the two layers of mosquito nets between them, she could still see his eyes sparkle in the dim light of the street lamps.

"Can't sleep?" he asked.

"No, it's not that. Just—how are you feeling?"

"I feel fine. Really. Go back to sleep."

"That's the thing with dengue fever. One minute you're feeling fine, the next you're bleeding from your organs and going in to shock—sorry, didn't mean to scare you."

"Would you like to take the bed? It's more comfortable. I wouldn't mind the couch. I've slept enough during the day already."

"I'm not taking your bed."

The bed creaked. From the street came the sad, drawn-out sound of a vendor selling rice cakes, like the call of some lonely night bird.

"Thu?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you think I'm creepy?"

The non-sequitur made Thu turn to her side to take a better look at him. "Why'd you ask that?"

"Lauren called me creepy."

"Because you proposed?" She didn't want to be petty, but the more she heard about Lauren, the less Thu started to like her.

Ralph's hands were fiddling with his quilt, and he didn't look at her. "I—uh, I tried to capture her breath. In a jar."

"You what now?!"

"I read it in a poem. Something about capturing your lover's breath so when she takes your breath away, you can get it back—"

Thu sat up. "It's poetry! It's a figure of speech! Seriously, what were you thinking?"

"I thought I was being romantic—"

"Romantic? You were just one short, crazy step away from turning her into a human skin coat!"

Ralph turned to her, startled. "Wait, why did you say that? Lauren said the same thing. Is that an actual thing in the future or—"

"It's from a movie," Thu said, rolling her eyes. She had to stop with the modern references. Ralph was worse than Captain America when it came to them.

"So I am creepy?"

Thu scrutinized him. Two months was not a long time to get to know someone, but she couldn't imagine that Ralph was some sort of a creepy stalker or serial killer in disguise. She had never met anyone so transparent with his emotions, with everything he did. Besides, even if he was some sort of creepy stalking serial killer, who would his intended victims be? Young women lost in time? It wouldn't be a very lucrative career for him. And a creep wouldn't have the self-awareness to ask if he was a creep, would he?

"That was creepy, but no, I don't think you are a creep." Then, just to make it clear that she would not stand for that sort of behavior, she grumbled, "It's a good thing you didn't tell me this earlier, or I never would've stayed with you."

In the gloom, Ralph's eyes were huge with worry. "You're not going to leave now, are you?"

Thu thought about Homeless Pete, about the time machine at the Printing House still calling for her like a beacon. "No," she said. "I'll be here until you get better."

***

Finally, after a week, Ralph appeared to be out of danger. His rash was mostly gone, and though he remained pale and often out of breath, he could move about more easily. Thu started thinking about bringing up her discovery of Homeless Pete and the possibility of her going home, but for some reason, she kept putting it off. She didn't even raise the question of going back to her boarding house—Heavens know what her landlady must be thinking of her now—and Ralph didn't either. They had settled into a comfortable routine over the past week, and it seemed both were reluctant to break it up.

So she still tossed and turned at night, not with worry, but with the dilemma of what to say to him churning up her brain. On the bed, Ralph was wakeful as well, watching the faint shadows of the trees outside on the wall and the ceiling.

"Ralph?"

"Yes?"

"If you had the time machine, where would you go? Or rather, when would you go?"

He took a moment, thinking. "Summer of 1914," finally he said. "Victoria and I were nine going on ten. We were supposed to go to our country estate, but the War had just started and it was all chaos, so our parents sent us to some cousins in Rye instead. We went hop picking with them. Victoria hated it because she got hay fever, but I loved it. You ever picked hops?"

Thu shook her head. "We don't have hops here. Is the stuff they use to make beer, right?"

"Yes. I remember running between the tall rows of hops like a giant green tunnel, and catching caterpillars, and jumping into the hop bins with the other kids. It smells so good." He turned over to his back, looking up at the ceiling, reminiscing. "Sometimes the cousins would take us to Dungeness Beach. It's a shingle beach, you know, no sand, all pebbles. I always tried to find a hag stone, but I never did."

"What's a hag stone?"

"A stone with a hole in it. They say it's magic and can bring you good luck."

Thu watched him getting lost in his memories, and for a moment, felt herself transported there as well. She could see Ralph as a little boy, running through an idyllic English landscape that she'd only seen on TV or read about in books. "But if you went back there, you would still be you now," she said. "I suppose you have to be a kid to enjoy all that, don't you?"

"No, I think I'd still enjoy it," he said, with conviction.

"So why would you even need the time machine? You can just go home. The beach is still there. And so are the hop fields."

Ralph looked wistful. "Yes, but there was something about that summer. I think everybody, whether they knew it or not, was trying to have a great time before the War took it all away. That's what made it special."

Thu was quiet, thinking about the war that was coming to the entire world, and the one coming to her country, and the one after that. For the first time, she realized that Ralph would have to live through another world war. He was probably a little young to remember the first one, but he would be sure to remember this one. That is if he survived it. Her heart constricted.

"Wouldn't you like to go to the future?" she asked.

"Perhaps," he answered, turning to his side so they were face-to-face. "Is it very different from now?"

"Yes. Almost like another world."

"In a good way or bad way?"

"Some of the changes are good. Better technology, better medicine. Some are bad though. It's a lot more crowded. Polluted. And when everything about you can be stored in a plastic rectangle, or a phone the size of your palm, it's very easy to lose a sense of who you are."

But Ralph wasn't interested in philosophical discussions about the self in modern times. "Is the food still the same?" he asked.

Thu had to smile. "Yeah, it's the same. Better, even. There's more variety. You can have oxtail soup in Hanoi, if you want."

"Wizard. Maybe I could go for a visit then. If you'd be there to show me around."

"Gladly."

"Thank you," he said, his eyes fluttering drowsily. "And then maybe we could go back to 1914 together. I'd love to show you around too."

"I'd like that."

"Good. 'Cause it'd be no fun without you..."

Something in the way he said it made her heart do a summersault. Surely, they were just talking hypothetically here. And surely, his offer was just to be polite. She tried to tell herself that. She tried to tell herself that he simply latched on to her because she was the only person that knew his secret, just as she'd latched on to him. She tried to tell herself that the tenderness in his eyes was probably just due to the fever. And even if it was real, then this was a boy who had proposed to a girl he'd only known for a week, a girl who, by his own admission, hated his guts. He probably fell in love all the time. It didn't mean anything.

Even as she told herself this, Thu realized she was actually considering the possibility of Ralph falling in love with her, and her heart was doing a jazz number at the idea. No. It was stupid. She had a boyfriend... or had she had a boyfriend? And even if she had broken up with Hoang, Ralph wasn't even her type! Her type was strictly "tall, dark, and brooding", Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Well, Ralph was tall, but he wasn't exactly dark—his hair and eyes both had lighter undertones that, under the right light, made them look like they were dusted with gold—and he certainly wasn't brooding. That boy was a golden retriever. He couldn't brood even if his life depended on it.

Plus, it was pointless to entertain the idea. Regardless of how Ralph felt about her, regardless of how she felt about him, she was going home, and that was that. She just had to tell him so, and let him decide what to do.

"Well then you're in luck," she said, trying to sound cheerful, "because guess what, or rather, who I ran into?"

There was no answer. She looked over to the bed. Ralph was fast asleep, his cheek pillowed on his hand, his mouth hanging open, snoring lightly.

Thu sighed. She would have to try again then. The only problem was she had no idea when or how.

***

It was too hard, Thu decided, to tell Ralph about her imminent departure face-to-face. It would be best if she went back to her boarding house and left him a note, as she had done that first night. She had to go back for her things anyway, and to hand in her notice at the newspaper. There was a twinge in her heart when she thought about saying goodbye to the women. She was going to miss them. She tried not to think whether she was going to miss Ralph.

"So you're going?" he asked that morning, looking rather downcast as he watched her pack her things.

"I have to, or my landlady is going to think I've done a runner," she said, trying to joke.

"It's my birthday on the 30th," he said. "I don't know what I'm doing yet, but I'll see you then, shall I?"

His birthday! Damn it. She couldn't bring herself to tell him that she would be gone by then. "Yeah," she said shortly, not looking at him.

Ralph hesitated, like he wanted to say something but wasn't quite sure how to. "Well... thank you for everything," eventually he said.

"Don't mention it." She lifted her bag up and extended a hand. "... Take care of yourself, OK? And for Heaven's sake, don't forget that mosquito net."

"I won't." Was it her imagination, or did he squeeze her hand a little too tightly, and let go a little reluctantly? "Thank you, Autumn," he said.

"Did you just call me 'Autumn'?" she asked, amused.

"... Yes." He looked away briefly, before turning those puppy eyes on her again. "May I?"

"What's wrong with 'Thu'?"

"Nothing! It's a perfectly fine name. I know they mean the same thing, but they evoke different things, you know? Thu is cool and bright, while Autumn is gentle and elegant... does that make sense? They're both you. It's just—Autumn sounds more romantic to me. As in poetic, I mean," he hastily corrected himself. When she didn't answer, he looked down, discomfited. "I know we haven't known each other for very long. And I'm not familiar with the Annam etiquette for nicknames. Perhaps you don't have nicknames at all. I suppose it's rather presumptuous of me to even ask. You can refuse. I'll understand."

But Thu wasn't listening to the rest of his speech. She just kept staring at him, all disheveled in his pajamas, pale and thin after his illness, while he avoided her eyes and shuffled his feet, the tips of his ears turning bright red. Did he just call me cool and bright and gentle and elegant? If he wasn't interested in her, he was doing a terrible job of showing that.

"No, it's OK," she said, a little breathlessly. "You can call me Autumn."

***

In a daze, she went back to the boarding house and dropped off her things. She had to pack, to stop by the office, and write the note for Ralph... Ralph, who had smiled and squeezed her hand as they said goodbye, certain that he was going to see her again... Ralph, who had asked if he could call her a romantic nickname... Somehow, her feet took her, almost of their own accord, back to the War Memorial at Robin Park. There was something she must check first. It had been a week; he might not be there at all.

She felt something rather akin to disappointment when the memorial came within sight and she saw Homeless Pete's black-coated figure lounging at its base, next to some ragged, desperate-looking people. This must be a regular hangout spot for the local homeless population. So Homeless Pete had told her the truth. He could be found there.

For a long while, Thu stood across the avenue, under the shadow of the Flag Tower, while a debate raged on in her mind. She could go home. It would be so easy. All she needed was some chocolate. It had only been two months. Even if she had gone missing for two months back in 2023, she was sure she could think of some crazy story to explain it away, and her family would be so glad to see her that they wouldn't care.

But as she was contemplating this, she was also remembering the way Ralph had looked at her in the past week, with so much trust and perhaps something else as well, the way he had offered to show her his world just like she had shown him hers, the way he had asked, so shyly and tenderly, if he could call her "Autumn". There was so much she still wanted to show him, so much she wanted to experience with him—his birthday, Christmas, New Year, Lunar New Year, all the foods and festivals and the fun of everyday life...

With one last look at Homeless Pete, Thu turned on her heel, walked to Rue Paul Bert, and went into Godard's department store. She didn't buy any chocolate though. Instead, she bought a wheel of Brie, which Ralph had mentioned as his favorite cheese. It cost her nearly half a month's rent, but she could afford it, and after a week of nothing but congee, he deserved a treat.

Chapter 8

[deep-state-partisan]

tagged by @lurklore

Last song: vapor season - bloodbath64

Favorite Color: i enjoy a nice navy blue :)

Currently Watching: the newsroom season 3, mostly boring american liberal crap, people talk the same way but its better than the 1st season, olivia munn is bad though she ended up with the guy with fleshy lips who wears untucked shirts constantly

Last Movie: the new spider man animated movie, pretty good until the last act

Currently Reading: book wise im reading neuromancer good book so far, its weird how much stuff ive read has been referencing it. internet brain rot book wise ive been keeping up with pale lights which has entered its third act? book? idk but its good, ive also started reading time to orbit: unknown which i enjoyed and finished in a single night. also waiting for wildbow to finish pale so he can write literally anyhting else than urban fantasy

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: savory

Relationship Status: professionally single

Current Obsession(s): im inbetween obsessions rn but the last one was the french war in indochina

Last Thing I Googled: kleo

Currently Working On: i have a carton of american sprits i need to get through

i hate tagging people on these things im not a cop

[antaxzantax]

What do you think about each notable member of the Ashford family? What do you like the most and the least about them? Any general thoughts?

Since there is hardly any information on the Ashford family as a whole, I will respond directly with my headcanons.

VERONICA ASHFORD

Great-granddaughter of Anne of Great Britain and the youngest of six children, she was always noted for her suspicious erudition and natural beauty. As a child, she enjoyed working in the office of her father, a Scottish businessman who reinvested his inherited Stuart fortune in coal mining. She assisted her father as a bookkeeper and served as his scientific advisor because of her innate talent for learning and her insatiable curiosity for knowledge. At the age of 16 she graduated with a degree in natural sciences, but never pursued a doctorate because she was more interested in business.

When her father was about to die, she conspired with her older brother Rupert to disinherit her other four siblings, taking advantage of her father's favouritism towards her and Rupert and the political circumstances of the time. Two brothers ended up in exile in continental Europe, a third murdered and a fourth disappeared. As agreed, Rupert shared half of the inheritance with Veronica. Veronica took over the factories her father managed in southern Scotland and decided to expand both her business and her fortune.

She built new factories in the north-east of England, north of the River Tyne, which spurred the urbanisation and industrialisation of the Northumberland coast from Newcastle to Berwick. As was common during the Victorian era, the labour force, which was hired for less than half a dollar today, consisted of poor peasant families exiled from the countryside and, especially, of children, mostly orphans who were employed from the streets and orphanages. Working conditions were deplorable and workers who died on the job were buried in mass graves in and around the factories. As today, Veronica prioritised maximum profit at minimum cost. This policy led to a steady growth of her own fortune, surpassing even that of her own family, the Campbells. Apart from industry, Veronica was involved in the colonisation of the East Indies, particularly India and Indochina, where she owned numerous plantations and ran her own company for the recruitment and shipping of slaves in Asia.

These ventures helped to strengthen her political influence, largely inherited from her royal ancestry, and to finance scientific projects and expeditions. It was the latter that made her popular in academic circles, and she became an honorary member of the Royal Society for the Advancement of Natural Science in London. She also ended up becoming an advisor and right-hand woman to Victoria I, a position that ennobled her. Although she aspired to be a duchess like her father, she was eventually granted the title of countess to avoid dynastic conflict with the Crown. She chose Ashford as the name of her title in honour of the village of the same name in Cornwall where she used to summer with her family. The title of Ashford was also adopted as her surname, and she became known as Ashford-Campbell-Douglas-Stuart, or simply Ashford. She chose Northumberland as her home and had his manor house, Ashford Hall, built there.

She married a distant cousin for convenience and had an only son, Stanley, born of a passionate affair with a Prussian general. Her personality was narcissistic and controlling, apathetic to the suffering of those she did not consider part of her social class, but loving and devoted to her family and close friends.

She died of natural causes in 1900.

STANLEY ASHFORD

Stanley was rather continuist with the economic and political line established by Veronica, but also opportunistic. When the First World War broke out, he turned his factories over to the production of armaments and munitions. With the progressive emergence of the United States as a power, he opened new industrial businesses in the country, becoming well known among the American upper class.

With the abolition of slavery and the improvement of working conditions, Stanley was one of the few businessmen in the UK who still clung to the old practices of the Industrial Revolution, such as child labour. Stanley continued to promote child labour in his factories until the Prime Minister sent him a note warning him that it was no longer socially acceptable. For this reason, Stanley became a rather unpopular figure in Northumberland, being characterised as a bogeyman who abducted children to lock them up forever in his factories. To clean up his image, he began investing in charities and negotiating with the workers' unions.

Stanley was noted for his fascination with the occult sciences. In a hidden room at Ashford Hall, he began to keep all sorts of esoteric trinkets and books. His favourite activity was psychophonies, which he practised assiduously, especially after the death of Veronica, with whom he claimed to contact from beyond the grave.

In politics, he was sympathetic to official positions after rejecting the creation of Northern Ireland, which led to his expulsion from the House of Lords, although he later regained his seat.

He married a Scottish Highlander and had twins, Thomas and Arthur. His personality was more moderate than Veronica's, although he was always brusque and uncompromising.

He died during the 1920s.

THOMAS ASHFORD

His untimely death meant that he was barely able to function as head of the family. Arthur's older brother, his brief life was marked by alcohol and prostitution. His addiction to alcohol began when he was very young, mainly because of social pressure and later because of his personal problems, mostly due to his constant affairs with prostitutes.

Apart from his bad life, he was very much loved by Stanley and his brother Arthur, with whom he always maintained a close friendship. Like his grandmother and father, Thomas only obtained a university degree, and quickly went into the family business. Politically, he was a forerunner of Scottish nationalism and Jacobism, both of which he espoused in his numerous pamphlets and works written under pseudonyms. In one letter he wrote that the Ashfords were Scots living in England.

Although he was betrothed, he never married, as he died before formalising his marriage and having children. He was noted for his cheerful and joking personality.

He died of liver cancer in the 1930s.

ARTHUR ASHFORD

After his brother's untimely death, he assumed his position as head of the family. From an early age, he stood out as a bookworm. His main interests were anthropology, sociology and history, from which he graduated. Moreover, Arthur was the first Earl Ashford to be awarded a doctorate with honours under the modern university system. He was a university lecturer and during the World Wars worked as a propagandist in the service of the British government. He wrote several books related to propaganda and social control through culture or ideology. Unlike his predecessors, he did not specialise in the natural sciences and business, although he must have run the family enterprises

He was a highly respected and well-known scholar, although he was also considered an obscure figure because of his misanthropic view of the human species and his introverted and discreet personality. He married a Welsh woman and had two sons, George and Edward. George would end up distancing himself from the family due to problems of conscience to the point of being disinherited by his own father, Arthur. Edward continued with his family and quickly became known for his scientific talents. Arthur and Edward became inseparable, although Edward would eventually take a completely different path from his father by turning to the natural sciences. Politically, Arthur abandoned the nationalist and Jacobite line of his twin brother Thomas for his loyalty to the British Crown.

He died in 1959 of liver cancer.

EDWARD ASHFORD

After becoming an Earl following Arthur's death, Edward focused on research and capitalising on his research. For this reason, he partnered with Oswell E. Spencer and funded the discovery of the Progenitor virus. He would later synthesise the first variant of the Progenitor virus: the Tyrant virus. Like his father, he was a famed and highly respected scholar with wide national and international political influence through his many contacts in the United Kingdom and the United States. Although conservative, his stance was tempered by his concern about nuclear war between the two hegemonic blocs. Apart from his research, he aspired to bolster his family's political and economic status.

He had an older brother, George, from whom he separated, although he always maintained a cordial relationship with him. He married a Dutch scientist, Elizabeth, whom he met in Canada. They had one child, Alexander, whom he always supported, even when he came up with the CODE project: Veronica. His personality was polite and professional, more optimistic than his father's and even idealistic.

He died in 1968 in an accident with the Progenitor virus.

ALEXANDER ASHFORD

After the unexpected death of his father, he took over the baton, becoming president of Umbrella and biological father of the two children that resulted from the CODE project: Veronica. Initially, he did not think they would be his biological children, but to avoid a confrontation with their mother and legal problems, he had no choice but to become involved in their conception himself.

The son of a British father and a Dutch mother, Alexander has both nationalities and is bilingual in English and Dutch. He was always very close to his father, whom he considered his role model. However, he was never his equal, a fact that triggers his insecurity and depressive tendencies. He hates George for abandoning his family. Unlike Edward, who is open and outgoing, Alexander is withdrawn, inexpressive and not given to establishing emotional bonds except with his closest friends or partners.

[hera-the-shoggoth]

The following are the contents of the article, including a description of the infobox, listed in succession.

(title of infobox in Chinese and Manchu languages) Chinese Imperial Air Force (English) 中華帝國空軍 (Hanzi) Chung-hua Ti-kuo K'ung-chün (Wade-Giles, the most widely used Chinese romanization system in this timeline)

(Below is the name in Manchu script, it only renders sideways here) ᡩᡠᠯᡳᠮᠪᠠᡳ ᡤᡠᡵᡠᠨ ‍ᡳ ᠠᠪᡴᠠᡳ ᠴᠣᠣᡥᠠ (Manchu) Dulimbai gurun-i Abkai Cooha (Manchu romanization)

Emblem of the Chinese Imperial Air Force:

Symbol consisting of the roundel with a blue-green-white-red dragon flying around the central red sun, vertical red and yellow banners with the name of the air force in white Hanzi and Manchu script, two outspread white bird wings, and the red imperial crown of the Great Qing Emperor

Founded: 10 August 1910; 113 years ago (as Army Flying Corps) 25 December 1929; 93 years ago (as current service)

Country: China Type: Air force

Role: Aerial warfare Airborne forces Air defense

Size: 300,000 active personnel (2023) 4,000+ aircraft (2023) Part of: Chinese Imperial Military Headquarters: Peking (this spelling remained popular in the English-speaking world) Motto(s) 盡忠報國 English: "boundless loyalty to the country" (the text of Yue Fei's famous tattoo) Colors: Blue, yellow, red (a medium cerulean blue, a slightly warm yellow, and a bright cherry red)

March: Quick: Dragon Aviators' March Slow: Five Thousand Years Anniversaries: Air Force Day (14 August) Aviation Day (10 August)

List of Engagements: Late Kuang-hsü Crisis

(Second Canton Revolt)

(Wu-ch'ang Rebellion)

(Hatchet Gang Rebellion) Sino-German War First World War Russian Civil War

(West Siberian Intervention) Warlord Era

(Imperial Protection War)

(Yün-Kwei War)

(Southern Expedition)

(Sinkiang Campaign) Outer Mongolia Insurgency Second Sino-Japanese War Second World War Chinese Civil War

(Tai-wan Strait Crisis) Korean War

(Yalu-Tumen Intervention) Sino-Indian War

(Battle of Bhutan) Tibet Uprising (1959)

(Operation Wind Shadow) Third Indochina War

(Operation Phoenix Eye) Spratly Islands Conflict Indonesia-Malaya War

(Operation Celestial Spear) Uzbekistan War

(Operation Black Tortoise)

Website: (Official website link)

Commanders: Commander-in-Chief: Jui-wen Emperor (era name 睿文, means "Forward-thinking culture") Director of the IDC: Li Kuo-t'ai Minister of War: Marshal Fan Sung-yün Chief of the Air Staff: Marshal Wei Chao-lin

Insignia: Roundel: Concentric circles of blue, yellow, and red, with a thin ring of blue on the outside, a large area of yellow inside it, and a small red circle at the center Fin flash: high visibility, Blue-Yellow-Red tricolor, low visibility yellow and red alone. Ensign: Black Ensign with Qing imperial flag in the canton. In the black field are depictions in white of the Little Dipper and the North Star, arranged in an arc from the middle fly to the lower hoist. The black field represents the night sky and commemorates the air force's famous night raids during World War II.

Aircraft flown: Bomber: Hsi-an JH-7, H-6 Electronic warfare: Russo-Balt RB-154, Shan-hsi Y-8, Shan-hsi Y-9, J-16D Fighter: Chʻêng-tu J-7, Mukden J-8, Chʻêng-tu J-10, Mukden J-11, Mukden J-16, Chʻêng-tu J-20, Samara Sa-27, Sa-30MKK, Sa-35S Helicopter: Harbin Z-8, Harbin Z-9 Attack helicopter: Harbin Z-19, CAIC Z-10 Utility helicopter: Harbin Z-20 Interceptor: Mukden J-8 Trainer: K'un-lun L-15, K'un-lun JL-8, JL-9 Transport: Hsi-an Y-20, Shan-hsi Y-9, Shan-hsi Y-8, Hsi-an Y-7, Zhukovsky Zh-76 Tanker: H-6U, Zh-78

Chinese name in various transcriptions used in this world: Traditional Chinese 中華帝國空軍 (used on the mainland) Simplified Chinese 中华帝国空军 (used on Tai-wan) Literal meaning: Chinese Imperial Air Force Bopomofo: ㄓㄨㄥ ㄏㄨㄚˋ ㄉㄧˇ ㄍㄨㄛˇ ㄎㄨㄥ ㄐㄩㄣ Wade–Giles: Chung-hua Ti-kuo K'ung-chün Cantonese Jyutping: Zung-waa dai-gwok Hong-gwan

(Below is the separate box for further reading on the Qing military that accompanies the main infobox in most such articles)

Armed Forces of the Great Ch'ing Empire Octagonal symbol known as "the Eight Corners" containing the colors of all the Eight Banners arranged to resemble the character 卐 (Wan, important to state-sponsored Vajrayana religion)

Executive departments:

Imperial Defence Council

Ministry of War

Staff:

Director of the IDC

General Staff of the Military

Works Department of the IDC

Censorate of the IDC

Services:

Chinese Imperial Military

Army

Navy

Air Force

Strategic Support

Independent troops:

Military Police Force

T'uan-lien Militia

Pao-chia Guards

Eight Banners

Special operations force:

Special Operations Department

Special Police Unit of the MPF

Snow Leopard Commando Unit

Mountain Eagle Commando Unit

Other troops:

CIM Joint Logistics Support Force

Military districts:

Eastern Theater Command

Southern Theater Command

Western Theater Command

Northern Theater Command

Central Theater Command

History of the Chinese military

Military history of China

Military ranks of China

Ranks of the Imperial Army

Ranks of the Imperial Navy

Ranks of the Imperial Air Force

(Main body of the article below here)

The Chinese Imperial Air Force (CIAF; Chinese: 中華帝國空軍; Wade–Giles: Chung-hua Ti-kuo K'ung-chün), also referred to as the Chinese Air Force (中華空軍) or the Imperial Air Force (帝國空軍), is the principal aerial service of the Great Ch'ing Empire, a part of the Chinese Imperial Military along with the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Army. The CIAF was officially established on 25 December 1929 and it is composed of five branches: aviation, ground-based air defense, radar, Airborne Corps and other support elements.

The development of the CIAF began with the creation of the Pei-yang Army Flying Corps in 1910, which flew French biplanes in reconaissance and bombing operations against rebels. With the splintering of the Pei-yang Army in 1916, elements of the Flying Corps entered the service of the various warlords vying for control of the government. During the First World War, ten bombers were shipped to Shang-hai for the Peking Government's use in dislodging the German Navy from Kiautschou Bay. The Flying Corps would participate in the Southern Expedition using primarily the Avro Avenger fighter aircraft and the Avro Aldershot heavy bomber provided by the United Kingdom, and in 1929, with the warlords brought together or defeated, the Air Staff was created as a separate branch of the military. The UK also assisted with the expansion of the Chinese aerospace industry during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Changes in the organization of the CIAF followed by modernization programs in the 1980s and increased technology development in the 21st century resulted in the J-20 stealth multirole fighter, the first of its kind for China.

The Air Force's mission is to secure the objectives of the Imperial Defence Council which are to "provide necessary security and defense of the Empire and to support the Government's international obligations". The highest-ranking military officer in the Air Force is the Chief of the Air Staff, who exercises supervision over Air Force units, while the IDC assigns Air Force components to unified combatant commands. Some units are also ceremonially affiliated with the Eight Banners, but since 1931 have been functionally integrated into the civilian command structure. The Helicopter Command contains most of the rotary-wing aircraft of the CIAF. Most of the air force is based in Mainland China, but some units do serve on foreign operations (principally over Manipur and Bukhara) or at long-established foreign bases (Havana, Ream, Djibouti, and Gorno-Badakhshan). Although the CIAF is the principal Chinese air power arm, the Imperial Navy's Fleet Air Corps and the Army Air Corps also operate armed aircraft.

Contents: 1 History 1.1 Origins 1.2 Warlord Era and Yüan Ch'en 1.3 First United Front 1.4 Second Sino-Japanese War 1.5 Chinese Civil War 1.6 Korean War to the Sino-Russian Split 1.7 1970s to 1980s 1.8 P'ing-hsiang era (平祥, Peaceful and Auspicious) 1.9 Jui-wen era 2 Personnel 2.1 Ranks and insignia 2.2 Commanders 3 Structure 3.1 Senior leadership 3.2 Headquarters 3.3 Commands 3.3.1 Transport command 3.3.2 Long-range command 3.3.3 Expeditionary command 3.3.4 Training and research 3.4 Order of battle 3.5 Airbases 3.6 Aerobatic display team 4 Aircraft 4.1 Combat air 4.2 Intelligence 4.3 Maritime patrol 4.4 Helicopters 4.5 Training aircraft 4.6 Advanced jet training 5 See also 6 References 6.1 Citations 6.2 Sources 7 Further reading 8 External links

History: (Further information: link to page "Aviation in China")

Origins:

Today's Chinese Imperial Air Force (CIAF) traces its roots back to August 10, 1910 when the government authorized the creation of the Army Flying Corps in an effort to improve intelligence and gain the upper hand on insurrections. On the same day, construction began on Peking Nan-yüan Airport as part of a program to modernize national infrastructure. Initiated in the wake of the Boxer Protocol in 1901, the Keng-tzu New Policies were ordered by the Empress Dowager Tz'ŭ-hsi to reform government bureaucracy along with the military, and by the start of the Hsuan-t'ung reign a group of preparatory departments had been organized for experimentation with new technology and administrative systems. In 1903 an imperial edict expanded the Wu-wei Corps to 36 divisions, creating the Pei-yang Army, in 1905 the Imperial Examinations were abolished, and in 1907 a new law code and judicial system were rolled out. That same year, the tax code was reformed and the rail system was nationalized, which greatly helped the empire's finances but caused significant unrest as well.

With the death of Jung-lu in 1903, General of the Right Division Yüan Shih-k'ai became commander of the Pei-yang Army. His role in the 1898 coup d'état against the Kuang-hsü Emperor made him many enemies, and when the empress dowager and the emperor died within a day of each other in 1909, he was forced to resign by Prince Ch'ün and return to his home village ostensibly for health reasons. In spite of this, Yüan remained in communication with his associates in the army. In the wake of the February 1910 Keng-hsü Army Uprising, he authorized the Pei-yang Army to found a flight school at Nan-yüan to train a group of eight pilots to fly reconnaisance using Cauldron Type D biplanes purchased from France, improving the army's ability to respond. In early 1911, the Aviation Research Institute was founded.[6]

Warlord Era and Yüan Ch'en:

(Photo labeled "Nan-yüan Air Force Academy drillmasters in front of Avro aircraft") (Photo labeled "Voisin V in Shang-hai")

In 1911, a major popular uprising began in Canton while another army mutiny occurred at Wu-ch'ang. In a panic, Empress Dowager Lung-yü convinced Yüan to come out of retirement and lead the war effort in exchange for the position of Prime Minister and the final adoption of the Hsuan-t'ung Constitution. The rebellion was crushed by the end of 1912, and the T'ung-meng-hui (TMH) revolutionary society was forced to flee to Japan once again with numerous dead. With the south pacified, Yüan feared he would no longer be of use to the Ch'ing court. In spite of the bureaucrats' protests, he brought his army into the capital in order to protect himself and his allies from execution, essentially holding the court hostage. For five years, he and his majority Han chinese cabinet ruled the country.

Reasoning that China desired a new Han-ruled dynasty, Yüan revised the constitution to make himself a dictator before announcing plans to seize the throne as the Hung-hsien Emperor of Great Ch'en, allowing his army to plunder Manchu estates as northern Chinese cities descended into racial violence. The Ch'ing court fled to Gan-su, where support for Han rule was lower, under the protection of Ma An-liang and Shaan-hsi governor Ch'ien Neng-hsün. With the divided country now in civil war, many of Yüan's closest supporters abandoned him, and the solidarity of his Beiyang clique of military protégés dissolved. The Hung-hsien Emperor was opposed by not only the Ch'ing and the minorities, but far more importantly by his subordinate military commanders, who believed that his usurpation would allow him to rule without depending on the support of the military.

A coalition of governors and officers led by An-hui governor Liang Tun-yen launched the Imperial Protection War against him, officially in the name of the Hsuan-t'ung Emperor, while the Air Corps rebelled as well and dropped bombs on the Forbidden City. Yüan's health continued to decline, and his death in 1916 paved the way for the return of K'ang Yu-wei and other anti-Yüan reformist exiles. The Prince Ch'ing Cabinet retook control of the capital, denouncing Yüan and purging his allies, while government authority was greatly damaged. Provinces broke away and the TMH returned in 1917 to start a Han-nationalist insurgency in Hunan.

The fall of Yüan Shih-k'ai created a power vacuum and fractured the army. Fearing for their lives, many of the southern Pei-yang generals revolted and took control of the provinces as military governors. Minister of War Wang Shih-chen, nominally in charge of the Pei-yang Army, abolished it and reorganized the loyalist forces into the Chinese Imperial Military. Expanding the airbases at Nan-yüan and Ta hsiao-ch'ang, Marshal Wang was able to acquire more machines from Britain and France when the new army attacked the German Leased Territory of Kiautschou Bay in 1917 and China was drawn into the First World War.

As part of the allied Operation Asher, ten Voisin V pusher bombers were produced in France and shipped to Shang-hai. In spite of having defeated the 1914 allied attack, by this time the garrison was low on supplies and the Chinese aircraft proved devastating to German morale during the Second Siege of Tsing-tao. An avid aviation enthusiast, the Hsuan-tung Emperor himself also took great interest in the development of the Air Corps, and when he assumed direct rule in 1924 he personally invested large amounts of his constitutional subsidy into it.

First United Front:

During the late 1920s, the Ch'ing Imperial Government formed the first united front with the liberal T'ung-meng Hui (TMH) party against competing warlords in a bid to reunite a fractionalized China, combining the liberal Wu-han Government with the Imperial Assembly. In this period, various airplanes were purchased and deployed by warlords in their struggle for power until nominal Chinese reunification in 1929 following the Southern Expedition which saw the use of Avro Aldershot heavy bombers to inflict serious damage on the infrastructure of several provinces in support of the government offensives. That year, the CIAF was designated as an independent branch of the armed forces. The eighteen graduate pilots of the military flight school included nine republican and nine monarchist pilots who were sent to the Russian Federation for two years of advanced flight training under the tutelage of the more experienced Russian Air Force. Two of the imperial graduates, Kuo Tzu-han and Sung Chien-yü, continued to serve in the Russian Air Force for five years until, in September 1928, they returned to Ti-hua as instructors.

At the same time, Tsai-chen the fifth Prince Ch'ing established the Bureau of Aeronautics in 1920. Subsequently, the organization continued to develop, and successively established an aircraft factory, an aviation command, and a new aviation school in Hsi-an. In May 1927, the Aviation Department of the Ministry of War was changed to the Aviation Committee of the Defense Council of the Imperial Government. By 1929, the government's aviation force was officially independent from the Army General Command and became an independent service.

Second Sino-Japanese War:

(Photo labelled "Self-developed Chinese transport aircraft during the Battle of Ch'ang-sha")

Following the abolition of many of their social privileges in the Hsin-wei Reform Act, many Banner families experienced poverty and violence. In response to perceived neglect, they became disaffected with the Hsuan-t'ung Emperor. Some sided with the northeastern Pei-yang Army generals of the Fêng-tʻien Clique, while some sought support from Imperial Japan.

A minor dispute known as the Wan-pao-shan incident between Han and Korean farmers occurred on July 1, 1931. The issue was highly sensationalized in the Imperial Japanese and Korean press, and used for considerable propaganda effect to increase anti-Chinese sentiment in the Empire of Japan. Believing that a conflict in Manchuria would be in the best interests of Japan, Kwantung Army Colonel Seishirō Itagaki devised a plan to provoke Japan into invading Manchuria by setting up a false flag incident for the pretext of invasion. The Independent Garrison Unit of the 29th Infantry Regiment (which guarded the South Manchuria Railway) placed explosives near the tracks, but far enough away to do no real damage.

On the morning of September 19, two artillery pieces installed at the Mukden officers' club opened fire on the Chinese garrison nearby, in response to the alleged Chinese attack on the railway. Chang Hsueh-liang's small air force was destroyed, and his soldiers fled their destroyed Pei-ta-ying barracks, as five hundred Japanese troops attacked the Chinese garrison of around seven thousand. The Chinese troops were no match for the experienced Japanese troops. By the evening, the fighting was over, and the Japanese had occupied Mukden at the cost of five hundred Chinese lives and only two Japanese lives, thus starting the greater invasion of Manchuria. By 1932, most of the region was under Japanese control and the Empire of Manchukuo was created, while a young member of the Hitara clan was enthroned in Ch'ang-ch'un as the K'ang-te Emperor.

The CIAF immediately dispatched combat aircraft to the Hung-ch'iao Aerodrome during the January 28th Incident of 1932, and aerial skirmishes occurred for the first time between China and the Imperial Japanese. In February 1932, US Reserve Lt. Robert McCawley Short, who was transporting armed Chinese aircraft, shot down an IJN aircraft on February 19, 1932, and downed another on February 22 before he was killed (he was posthumously raised to the rank of colonel in the CIAF). During the early days of China's war of resistance against the Japanese invasion, the Imperial Air Force participated in several battles, including attacking Imperial Japanese Navy warships along the Yangtze River and supporting the Battle of Shang-hai. By this time, the Imperial Air Force's main fighter models were the Curtiss Hawk II and Hawk III fighters. On August 14, 1937, Japanese Imperial Navy bombers bombed Hang-chou Chien-ch'iao Airport, but was defeated by the CIAF; therefore, August 14 was designated as Air Force Day by the Imperial Government. In May 1938, the CIAF dispatched two B-10 bombers to Japan to drop leaflets.

By the middle of the war, intelligence units of the Imperial Japanese Navy cracked the radio codes of the Chinese army, putting the Air Force under attack. In the middle and late stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the addition of Chennault and other foreign pilots, as well as the support provided by the United States after joining the Allies, restructured the combat power of the CIAF and participated in the Hsin-chu Air Attack, and air raids on Japan. After the end of World War II, in June 1946, the Aviation Committee of the Military Committee of the Imperial Government was changed to the General Command of the Air Force.

Chinese Civil War:

In January 1941, as intensifying clashes between imperial and TMH forces ended the second united front against invading Japanese forces, the government's Imperial Defense Council (IDC) established the Air Force Engineering School with Kuo as commandant and Sung as head instructor. In May 1944, just over a year before the Japanese surrender to Allied forces, the IDC established an Aviation Section in Hsi-an with Kuo as its director and Sung as deputy director. Two years later in May 1946 and after the withdrawal of Japanese troops, the IDC established the Northeast Old Aviation School in Kirin. By 1949 the Aviation Section of the IDC had 560 trained personnel (125 pilots and 435 ground support specialists), purchased 435 aircraft from the Russian Federation, acquired 115 republican aircraft, and operated seven military flight schools.

During the Second Civil War between the T'ung-meng Hui and the Imperial Government from 1946 to 1949, the Air Corps of the Republic of China participated in combat support and air strikes against the CIAF on the mainland and around the Tai-wan Strait. In October of the same year, the ACROC assisted in stopping the advance of the Chinese Imperial Army at the Battle of Ku-ning-t'ou in Quemoy, and in April 1949, the Air Corps retreated to the former Japanese colony of Tai-wan along with other government departments of the ROC. In October 1952, Marshal Chou Ên-lai and the battle-hardened army of the Chinese Communist Party broke with the T'ung-meng Hui and launched a successful revolution with the help of Indigenous Taiwanese, abolishing the National Assembly of the TMH and founding the People's Republic of China; the world's second socialist state after India. The ACROC sided with the revolution and became the PRCAAF. As relations soured between the left liberal governments of NATO and the right authoritarian governments of the Eurasian Pact, the United States intervened on behalf of the PRC and preserved the island's self-government. There have been at least 11 air battles in the area since 1952.

The real opportunity to obtain a large number of aircraft came from the Northeast Alliance Aviation School established in 1946 after the end of the Anti-Japanese War. At this time, the Imperial Government seized Japanese-made aircraft, trained pilots, and received a large number of American-made aircraft from the surrendered ROC Air Force in southeast China and Nanking during the civil war. On March 17, 1949, personnel were transferred from the Northeast Aviation School to establish the "Imperial Defence Council Aviation Bureau" in Peking. The director Ch'ang Ch'ien-k'un (the executive vice president of the Northeast Aviation School), under the Combat Education Department, Aeronautical Engineering Department, Civil Aviation Department, Information Section and Supply Section, staffed 64 people. In May 1949, the Navigation Management Office, the Secretariat, and the Imperial Office were added, and the number was expanded to 172 people. The major military regions have since successively established aviation divisions.

(end of finished part of article)

Notes:

While they are strange bedfellows, the strategic importance of Tai-wan Island was sufficient for the US to accept the existence of the PRC; the start of a similar reconciliation as began in the 1970s during Detente.

In this timeline, the White Movement won the Russian Civil War. Specifically, the Provisional All-Russian Government or "Ufa Directory" of Alexander Kolchak defeated the Bolsheviks in 1919, retaking Moscow and Petrograd partially with the help of a Qing expeditionary force which aided the Basmachi rebels in Central Asia and helped hold sections of the Trans-Siberian Railway alongside the Czechoslovak Legion. Kolchak was assassinated by a monarchist in 1920, which began a second phase of the civil war. The conflict ended in 1922 when the Ufa Directory combined with the Samara Government to form a federal republic of Russia dominated mostly by Kadets and Right SRs.

Primary Stage Socialism is still very young in this world and revolutionary parties have only been successful in the Global South. During the alternate Cold War, the western bloc was primarily fighting the Eurasian Pact of the Greater White Movement and gave military assistance to any allies it could find from the PRC to India to Iraq. Only after the main phase of the Cold War ended did the US and NATO begin to turn against these countries.

[lightdancer1]

This book remains one of my favorite reads on failure and its consequences:

Wrapped up the second of the Vietnam War books. I believe that books like this, along with an older interest I return to every now and then of the Confederate experience of the Western theater of the War of the Rebellion offer key points. They deconstruct the premise of authority innately deserving respect because it exists. All too many times the people entrusted with it are not suited to the tasks they were given and carry entire societies to ruin in their wake. In the history of failure one can see, too, a means to understanding the world by realizing that sometimes bad things happen because the people entrusted nominally to prevent them are too incompetent or self-deluded to function.

And in that one sees the history of the end of the Second Indochina War and the collapse of the US and US-sponsored war machine in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. After years of blundering around shooting and bombing anything larger than a matchbox and declaring semi-literate to illiterate rice farmers blown to hamburger by deploying colossal amounts of firepower onto people who were only human, after all, and couldn't in fact survive that impact and declaring itself invincible and undefeated, the USA belatedly remembered that its live fire exercise to prove the military function of its weapons was in fact a war in a specific country in a specific place in time and that its weaponry was not in fact capable of shooting and bombing its way out of the mess it made.

The result was that a hollow army for a hollow state was exposed to defending itself and justifying its existence on its own without infinite budgets and support and the entire system collapsed, in scenes of horror that have few equals and set in motion a third war right out of the ashes of the second. The narrative of the decline and fall of Lon Nol's Cambodia and South Vietnam and royal Laos is a grim one. It has few equals in or out of the Cold War, and the consequences of callous detached blundering from the United States was bad enough for a country that lost in 25 years what the Russian Army in Ukraine lost in 1.

For Indochina it was a sequence of horrors that in the most regrettable reality of all had not ended, it simply went from the Second to the Third War with minimal breaks and with the PRC blundering to fail to preserve Pol Pot's marauding horde (whom Hanoi put in power and then realized too late that this was a very bad idea when its friends started slaughtering Vietnamese in China and trying to shoot up the border) and wrecked massive numbers of troops in border battles with Vietnam thinking that everything is 1950 on the Yalu and finding out, belatedly, that no in fact it is not.

The fall of Saigon was apocalyptic, the fall of Cambodia Hell on Earth. And yet none of it actually ended war, it just ended US war and US concerns about the wars.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 3.9

141 BC – Liu Che, posthumously known as Emperor Wu of Han, assumes the throne over the Han dynasty of China. 1009 – First known mention of Lithuania, in the annals of the monastery of Quedlinburg. 1226 – Khwarazmian sultan Jalal ad-Din conquers the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. 1230 – Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Asen II defeats Theodore of Epirus in the Battle of Klokotnitsa. 1500 – The fleet of Pedro Álvares Cabral leaves Lisbon for the Indies. The fleet will discover Brazil which lies within boundaries granted to Portugal in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. 1701 – Safavid troops retreat from Basra, ending a three-year occupation. 1765 – After a campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son. Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge, though his son may have actually died by suicide. 1776 – The Wealth of Nations by Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith is published. 1796 – Napoléon Bonaparte marries his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais. 1811 – Paraguayan forces defeat Manuel Belgrano at the Battle of Tacuarí. 1815 – Francis Ronalds describes the first battery-operated clock in the Philosophical Magazine. 1841 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the United States v. The Amistad case that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally. 1842 – Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, Nabucco, receives its première performance in Milan; its success establishes Verdi as one of Italy's foremost opera composers. 1842 – The first documented discovery of gold in California occurs at Rancho San Francisco, six years before the California Gold Rush. 1847 – Mexican–American War: The first large-scale amphibious assault in U.S. history is launched in the Siege of Veracruz. 1862 – American Civil War: USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (rebuilt from the engines and lower hull of the USS Merrimack) fight to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships. 1908 – Inter Milan was founded on Football Club Internazionale, following a schism from A.C. Milan. 1916 – Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa leads nearly 500 Mexican raiders in an attack against the border town of Columbus, New Mexico. 1933 – Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt submits the Emergency Banking Act to Congress, the first of his New Deal policies. 1942 – World War II: Dutch East Indies unconditionally surrendered to the Japanese forces in Kalijati, Subang, West Java, and the Japanese completed their Dutch East Indies campaign. 1944 – World War II: Soviet Army planes attack Tallinn, Estonia. 1945 – World War II: A coup d'état by Japanese forces in French Indochina removes the French from power. 1945 – World War II: Allied forces carry out firebombing over Tokyo, destroying most of the capital and killing over 100,000 civilians. 1946 – Bolton Wanderers stadium disaster at Burnden Park, Bolton, England, kills 33 and injures hundreds more. 1954 – McCarthyism: CBS television broadcasts the See It Now episode, "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy", produced by Fred Friendly. 1956 – Soviet forces suppress mass demonstrations in the Georgian SSR, reacting to Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy. 1957 – The 8.6 Mw  Andreanof Islands earthquake shakes the Aleutian Islands, causing over $5 million in damage from ground movement and a destructive tsunami. 1959 – The Barbie doll makes its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York. 1960 – Dr. Belding Hibbard Scribner implants for the first time a shunt he invented into a patient, which allows the patient to receive hemodialysis on a regular basis. 1961 – Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a dog and a human dummy, and demonstrating that the Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight. 1967 – Trans World Airlines Flight 553 crashes in a field in Concord Township, Ohio following a mid-air collision with a Beechcraft Baron, killing 26 people. 1974 – The Mars 7 Flyby bus releases the descent module too early, missing Mars. 1976 – Forty-two people die in the Cavalese cable car disaster, the worst cable-car accident to date. 1977 – The Hanafi Siege: In a 39-hour standoff, armed Hanafi Muslims seize three Washington, D.C., buildings. 1978 – President Soeharto inaugurated Jagorawi Toll Road, the first toll highway in Indonesia, connecting Jakarta, Bogor and Ciawi, West Java. 1987 – Chrysler announces its acquisition of American Motors Corporation 1997 – Comet Hale–Bopp: Observers in China, Mongolia and eastern Siberia are treated to a rare double feature as an eclipse permits Hale-Bopp to be seen during the day. As the comet made its closest approach to Earth on March 26, all 39 active members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed ritual mass suicide over a period of three days, in the belief that their spirits would be teleported into an alien spacecraft flying inside the comet's tail. 1997 – The Notorious B.I.G. is murdered in Los Angeles after attending the Soul Train Music Awards. He is gunned down leaving an after party at the Petersen Automotive Museum. His murder remains unsolved. 2011 – Space Shuttle Discovery makes its final landing after 39 flights. 2012 – A truce between the Salvadoran government and gangs in the country goes into effect when 30 gang leaders are transferred to lower security prisons.